Month: March 2025

Abstract, high-tech image representing Helium Mobile's Zero plan

Helium Mobile’s Free Zero Plan: What’s Really Going On?

Christian

Last month, Helium Mobile launched its Zero plan. While the plan may not be around forever, it’s genuinely free and not just a short-term trial.

The Zero plan includes:

  • 3GB of data
  • 100 minutes
  • 300 texts

Helium Mobile markets this as “invite-only” with a waitlist, but this appears to be mostly a marketing tactic. Invite codes are readily available, and Helium Mobile regularly emails waitlisted users encouraging them to sign up.

Beyond being free, subscribers can earn “Cloud Points” that will apparently soon be redeemable for gift cards and other rewards.

Some have suggested the plan is free because Helium Mobile profits by selling user data. Here’s an excerpt from The Mobile Report:

So how could they possibly offer free service? Simple—selling user data. The old adage ‘If the product is free, you are the product’ likely applies here.
I get why people are drawn to this explanation. Helium Mobile may even have wanted the plan to be perceived this way. And while Helium Mobile is collecting and potentially could sell data about users of the Zero plan, I don’t think that’s the company’s core strategy with the new plan.

Helium Mobile’s Costs

Roughly guesstimating, I bet it costs Helium Mobile $10-$20 per month to offer service to someone that uses all their allotted data, minutes, and texts on the free plan. Realistically, average use is going to be well below the maximum permitted use (especially since many people will use Helium Mobile’s Zero plan as a supplement to their primary phone plan).1

Helium Mobile’s Goal

The user data Helium Mobile collects probably isn’t valuable enough to sustain this model. With venture capital backing, they’re likely focused on rapid subscriber growth, generating publicity, and converting free users to paid plans down the road.

Anyhow, credit where credit is due. The Zero plan has the most impressive Broadband Label I’ve ever seen:

Broadband Label highlighting the free nature of the Helium Mobile Zero plan

Network Slicing Hits Prime Time: T-Mobile’s T-Priority

Christian

T-Mobile recently launched a service for first responders called T-Priority. The service involves a combination of priority access, preemption capabilities, and a dedicated network slice.

With network priority access and preemption, your voice, data, and messages get automatic prioritization over non-essential network traffic. And once you’re connected, you stay connected, even with severe congestion or poor radio coverage.

During times of major network congestion, non-priority users are preempted from the network to make room for your team’s traffic. And, in rare cases, non-priority users are dropped from the network, although that’s less common today with the robustness of our 5G network. When needed, the T-Priority 5G network slice can also expand to provide extra data capacity, ensuring your team is first in line.Via T-Mobile

Network Slicing – Finally Real

Network slicing received significant attention during 5G’s launch, but T-Priority is one of the first major offerings actually implementing the technology. With network slicing, a portion of network resources is carved out for a specific use case or set of customers.

T-Mobile hasn’t shared much about T-Priority’s technical implementation. The network slicing component likely only functions on 5G standalone (5G SA) connections. T-Mobile suggests it will increase resources for the T-Priority slice during emergencies, but details on how resource-allocation decisions are made remain unclear.

Priority Still Matters

While on a dedicated network slice, priority levels may be nearly irrelevant. However, since T-Mobile’s 5G SA coverage isn’t universal, T-Priority subscribers will often connect via 4G and 5G non-standalone networks. On these networks, enhanced prioritization (via an improved QCI or 5QCI) could make a significant difference during congestion.

Early Days

Since T-Priority is a new service, T-Mobile is likely still working out aspects of how the service works—including decisions about the appropriate amount of network resources to dedicate. More details about T-Priority’s technical implementation should emerge over time.